Arcanologist is easily the strongest card of the entire expansion, though that hardly came as a shock to us after its initial reveal. Cards like these, whilst they may like the 'flashy' visually obvious broken effects such as Patches the Pirate, they still silently influence the entire game on its own.

Firstly, the card is absurd because it is a 2/3 minion with a draw card effect. That on it's own would be included in every single class and each deck in the entire game, I would run 2 copies of such a card in all my decks. But amazingly it's even better than this.

The card brings alive every single secret synergy card as you no longer must keep secrets in your opening mulligan, which previously lead to very clunky turns that were inefficient. For anyone who tried experimenting with Medivh's Valet upon release, you will know what I mean. Then there is the obvious benefit in that you are guaranteed a solid curve, every game, forever, so long as this card is in your opening hand.

As broken as Arcanologist is, I'm very happy it exists. It provides so many new deck building options that we just could not consider before since the loss of Mad Scientist.

That being said, I doubt any of us would be shocked to see this nerfed in the future, most likely to a 2/2, and even then it will still be an auto-include in every mage deck until it rotates out of standard. What a crazy card.

It's funny, because despite all the comparisons to Mad Scientist and comments that this wasn't as strong, this is likely the card that will save Freeze Mage from the scrap heap. 90% of all games, you don't need your Ice Block before turn 6-7 anyways (and if you did, you were losing anyways), so paying 3 mana extra to drop the block manually really doesn't hurt you that much. But just like Mad Scientist could, the power to draw your Ice Block when needed makes this card SO powerful it's ridiculous (or, if already in hand, Ice Barriers for stalling).

It's crazy to think that Arcanologist is almost always strictly worse than Mad Scientist, yet, despite the power creep since Naxx, it remains a very powerful addition to the Mage arsenal. The most overpowered [unnerfed] early game minion in the history of the game was released in the second freaking expansion!

What it allows you to do is run a "Secret mage" with less actual secrets. Mage has some fairly solid secrets but quite a few you don't actually want in your deck. Lets say a secret mage wants to turn 3 Kirin Tor Mage, -> drop an secret that's hard to remove eg. Ice Block -> Turn 4: Ethereal Arcanist.

To pull this off consistently you need to have 4-6-secrets in your deck of the right type. But with Arcanologist you might get away with just 4 or even 2.

What it allows you to do is run a "Secret mage" with less actual secrets. Mage has some fairly solid secrets but quite a few you don't actually want in your deck. Lets say a secret mage wants to turn 3 Kirin Tor Mage, -> drop an secret that's hard to remove eg. Ice Block -> Turn 4: Ethereal Arcanist.

To pull this off consistently you need to have 4-6-secrets in your deck of the right type. But with Arcanologist you might get away with just 4 or even 2.

This card has striking similarities to Mad Scientist. It's a well-statted two drop that gives you a secret. The obvious comparison is "This makes you pay 3 mana for the secret, in exchange, it has 1 more health. That's a kinda bad trade-off, therefore, it's more balanced than Mad Scientist." However, there are deeper considerations at play.

When secrets are forced onto the board very early in the game by Mad Scientist, your opponent usually has low mana and can only play cheap cards that are not greatly punished by these secrets. However, with Arcanologist, you can save the secret for a game-swinging moment, such as to prevent a Flamestrike or Dragonfire Potion from clearing you, rather than just hitting The Coin with your Counterspell. In this way, paying three mana for a secret later can often be better than paying zero for it straight off. Besides, in all-out secret decks with Kabal Lackey or Kirin Tor Mage, you might not even need to pay the three mana cost.

In conclusion, I predict that this card will define all mage decks in years to come. Just like Mad Scientist, this card will be auto-included in almost all or all mage decks, and mages will play secrets they otherwise wouldn't for no other purpose than to activate this card. It feels a little annoying that Blizzard basically is pointing to mage players and saying "Thou shalt play secrets," but whatever.